Demand for nurses continues to grow in Oregon, especially in long-term care, home health and hospice and public health, according to a new survey from the Oregon Center for Nursing. While the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services predicted a small nurse surplus in Oregon by 2030, they won’t be distributed evenly, and some areas of the state won't have enough qualified nurses, the report found.
More than 7,000 nurses who work in one of the country’s largest public health systems are expected to begin a strike at 7 a.m. Tuesday, protesting what they describe as unsafe and illegal patient-to-nurse ratios and generally inadequate staffing.
Los Angeles County officials and the labor union representing the county’s nurses reached an 11th-hour deal Monday night to avert a strike that was set to begin Tuesday morning. “Los Angeles County is gratified that the bargaining committee of SEIU Local 721 has reached a tentative agreement with the county,” county chief executive officer Sachi A. Hamai said in a statement late Monday night.
In the U.S. midterm elections, Lauren Underwood, a 31-year-old African-American nurse and former senior adviser with the U.S. government on public health emergencies was elected to Congress. Paula Risikko, a Finnish nurse, recently became speaker of her country’s parliament. Soon after becoming director-general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus appointed Elizabeth Iro to his leadership team as the chief nursing officer.
Senator Jerry Moran (R.-Kansas) announced a federal nursing grant for the Irene Ransom Bradley School of Nursing at Pittsburg State University on Monday. The grant, which will total $800,288 over three years, will fund the Advanced Nurse Education Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) Program at PSU.
A group of House Democrats introduced a bill on Friday to help protect millions of nurses and other health care workers from the high rates of violence they experience on the job. The new bill, called the Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act, would require hospitals, nursing homes, rehab centers, mental health providers, and jails to develop a workplace safety plan to protect their workers from violence they experience at the hands of patients — a surprisingly common phenomenon.